Excerpt from: Big Water
Published by Lyons & Burford, New York, NY
We thank Nick Lyons for use permission!

My brother and I never caught
one of the big rainbows for which the Soo
was famous, though he hooked into into something once
that smashed his rod with one run,
and left him swearing
like a sonuvabitch. Oh it was exciting
just to know they were there, the big fish,
and when the water was low

and the light was right you could look down
from the top of the dam at the head
of the river and see them, long
gray shapes lying easy in the water,
almost sill, maybe once in a while
a little curl of a fin. One year
we heard of a local had been arrested
with a thirty-three pounder
that he'd speared. That kept us coming back
five years more at least, though between us
we caught exactly nothing, half
of nothing apiece, my brother said,
and we worked hard for it. We'd cross the locks
and fish all day in the tail race below

the powerhouse, edging out into
the heavy water to where
we didn't dare take another step, or turn
around even, and had to back
into shore over stones round and smooth
and slippery as you'd imagine
skull bones might be. Or we'd fish

From the spit of land beyond the tail race, in the rapids, bells
ringing behind us, horns bellowing and whistles screaming
from the ore carrier warped in to the big bollards
on the locks, men in foreign-looking caps
yelling up messages
to the crews on the deck: If you see Georgie McInnis
in Duluth, tell him Oley
is working at the Soo. Other men

on the approaches to the locks
fished for whitefish with forty feet of line, and two
large mayflies on the hook, and you could look down
and see shining schools of fry, thirty yards
across, and suddenly
they'd melt away as a big trout
came cruising by only ten
or twelve feet down. It was good times, that's for sure,

when my brother and I
could get together at the Soo, big trout
on our minds, we'd be together at the Soo,
where we stayed at Mrs. Letroureau's Boarding House
every year in August for fourteen years
because it was cheap, and there was a tub
set on lion paws, and long enough
for a tall man to straighten out his legs, and deep enough
to bring the water to his chest - stayed there

in spite of the bugs. I remember
the first night there, I dreamed
I was cover with specks
of fire, woke up, there was a bug
working on me, I jumped up and pulled
the covers off the mattress, there they were,
half a dozen things big as potato bugs crawling up
the bed board, and I woke up my brother

in a panid, I said "There's bedbugs, the place
is crawling with bugs," but in the war he'd served
in India with the Brits, with kraits and cobras and bugs
that could swell your balls
to the size of cantaloupes, "What of it,
go to sleep!" he said. So what the hell, I went out
to the car and spent the night
in the back seat. Every year for fourteen years

my brother and I went back to work
the rapids, our heads aching with what
it would be like to hand into one
of those fish. Never did. Last year I went
back to the Soo alone, stayed one day, first time

about big fish, the whitefish
long gone account of the lampreys, likewise
the lakers, everybody's mind
on something else or other, though lots
of guys out fishing on the docks
because of not much work,
and nothing much else to do, sitting there
waiting it out, bored and cold

in a sheeting rain that day, water pouring
off their hats and down their necks and into the sleeves
of their jackets every time they raised
their arms, and to top it off
the day I was there the turbines
were shut down, and the slots closed, the race
no more than a series of riffles and runs
between pools - though in the taverns

the proof was there, up on the walls behind the bars, over the mirrors,
in glass cases, there they were, the big fish, some of them
a little the worse for the years
they'd hung there, dusty, varnish peeling, paint
pretty garish in some cases, nevertheless for all
the bug-eyes, cracked and missing fins
there they were, mounts
of twelve- and fifteen-pound rainbows
came to the fly out there
in the rapids, the guides
straining at their poles trying to hold the canoes
upright and steady, the canoes
still pitching and rolling plenty, the sports
rolling out their heavy lines, the flies
floating down the feeding lanes
of that demented water,

And the great trout coming
to the fly, breaking water, suspending themselves
over the rapids, an outburst, a levitation
of high-leaping rainbows, striped scarlet, striped
cherry-red, green-
gilled, brilliant
in the ripe, sun-smelling day! ~John Engels

About John Engels

John Engels has taught English Literature at
St. Michaels's College in Winooski, Vermont for many years. He
is the author of five books of poetry, including The Homer
Mitchell Place, Vivaldi in Early Fall, and Weather-Fear, for
which he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is recognized
as one of America's finest poets. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.